A 44 percent of school children suffered homophobic harassment in Peru, even of teachers

KCBA News

February 20, 2014 4:17 pm

Lima, Feb 20 (Entravision) .- a 44 per cent of schoolchildren in Peru suffered from “bullying” (harassment) homophobic, including from their teachers, and a 14 per cent of students not heterosexual tried to remove the life for that reason, according to a new study sponsored by the UN to the Efe had access today in Lima.

The “bullying” is homophobic verbal harassment against young people viewed as non heterosexuals and is more common among men than among women, said the study developed, in addition to Peru, in public schools in Chile and Guatemala by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Peruvian Cayetano Heredia University.

A 68 per cent of schoolchildren not heterosexual said he had been the victim of homophobic harassment, against 43 % of the heterosexual, through interviews with 900 students.

This type of harassment is also extended to any student that has the appearance of being fragile, shy, quiet or sensitive and that, for this reason, receives the qualifier “cabro”, “weird” and “Machona”, in the case of women.

The document, known as “It was like going every day to the slaughterhouse – The homophobic bullying in public educational institutions in Chile, Guatemala and Peru”, indicated that this type of abuse led to the isolation of the victims, the depression and a 14 per cent of heterosexual not to attempt suicide.

A 23 per cent of schoolchildren notice to their teachers, but not heterosexual young people reported with greater frequency than heterosexuals who was a professor the perpetrator of “bullying” against them, said the document in its conclusions.

Also a 35 per cent of the victims not heterosexual left the center of studies and 50 per cent of the victims spoke heterosexual who “learned to fight” to end the harassment.

With regard to the expectations of a solution to the problem, the students interviewed expressed his wishes that the school offers an exit with a direct commitment of teachers and authorities.

The study pointed out that in Peru the humiliating punishment of the offender is considered “the only way to solve the problems”, but that the reaction of the college is not the most effective, in spite of these problems were tackled in a law enacted in 2011.

The document recommended to pay attention to the social environment in which is inserted the school to implement policies sensitive to any kind of minority ethnic and sexual.

In addition, the standard recommends to persuade the authorities and teachers to be vigilant about the homophobic attack and intervene immediately, receive training to identify behaviors homophobic and racist among students and develop programs to educational dialog to increase awareness of the consequences of this problem.